Grid Computing Services – Utility Computing For Enterprises
More on innovative Japanese communications services, Softbank’s subsidiary, Japan Telecom, has a Grid Computing service for medium to large enterprises. Instead of adding servers, storage and database licenses, a customer can add computing capacity on the Japan Telecom network. The carrier sells as its smallest package a 1 CPU service (running of a blade server), with Oracle 10G database and 10 Gigabytes of storage at a price of $2,000 per month. Access to the Computing Grid is ideally through a 10 Mbps Carrier Ethernet service. Japan Telecom delivers these services to support customer needs in the automotive, healthcare, financial services and publishing industries
The motivation to supplement general data bandwidth and internet access services comes from competitive pressures. With 100 Mbps Carrier Ethernet service now available at $300/month, a carrier would need to move up closer to the application layer to reap financial rewards. The availability of software solutions that can partition database processes to demarcate customers allows such a service to become possible. Customers can sign on or turn computing services on a per CPU basis. I am eager to see such services thrive in the US market. This is not general storage, this involves a slice of the data center with processing capacity and database functionality in addition to storage to be available like a switch.